2025 NBA Draft: Breaking Down Player Potential by the Numbers

By: Ben Schubbe

With the 2025 NBA Draft right around the corner, prospects are preparing themselves for the biggest leap in their young careers. Will they handle the transition well? Will they become a breakout star in the league? Many questions arise around each prospect this time of year and within this article I aim to provide data-backed reasoning as to who in this class could become a rising star and potential All-Star in the NBA.

Although data can provide some clues as to who may breakout in the league, there are obviously so many more factors that come into play to decide the actual outcome of a player and whether they can reach their full potential.

Overview

In this article I analyze the current prospects against the rising stars and All-Stars from the previous five draft classes across basic and advanced stats categories. Rising stars is very subjective, so I determined the group of rising stars based on general consensus from following the NBA and the media.

The data was sourced from RealGM for this project and then I used Excel and Python to clean the data from prospects who withdrew from the draft, create a data frame, and create the graphs to analyze. From there I also used Power BI to create the graphs again so I could hover over each player to see who fit into the clusters from the current prospect pool and dive into a deeper analysis featured in my next article titled 'Microwave Magic: Prospects with Star-Level Metrics Ready for the Next Level.'

MPG vs. PPG

The first statistical categories I focused on for determining player success were minutes per game and points per game in the season before they would be drafted. Although very basic stats, they can reveal insights about who was able to create points more efficiently and who was trusted by their coaches to play more minutes.

The scatter plot that resulted when measuring these statistics showed a positive linear trend, as to be expected. The rising stars were generally clustered closer to the top right corner and the proven All-Stars even further up the line.

As for the prospects fitting into these groups, some top names in the draft fit perfectly into the All-Star cluster including:

• Dylan Harper
• Ace Bailey
• VJ Edgecombe
• Tre Johnson
• Nique Clifford
• Cedric Coward

Many of the other top prospects were able to match the offensive output and playing time of the current NBA rising stars and end up in that cluster. However big names like the Duke duo of Cooper Flagg and Khaman Maluach, and other top prospects like Noa Essengue, Egor Demin, and Carter Bryant all missed out on either cluster.

3FG% vs. FG%

After analyzing pure point scoring, I then focused on efficiencies in shooting both three-pointers and overall field goal percentage, again compared to the stats of current NBA rising stars and all-stars in their last playing year before being drafted.

The scatter plot that resulted here showed that current top performers in the NBA gathered a field goal percentage between 40% and 50% and a very high three-point average. The current all-stars did not have a common gathering area of trend, so I only analyzed the rising star region. 

There is also a high amount of players who never made a three that are rising stars in the league.

The prospects who fit into the rising stars cluster include: 

• Cooper Flagg
• Dylan Harper
• Ace Bailey
• VJ Edgecombe
• Tre Johnson
• Kon Knueppel
• Jeremiah Fears
• Walter Clayton Jr.
• Nique Clifford
• Egor Demin
• Carter Bryant
• Hugo Gonzalez

The entire projected top five pick all made this cluster, but Collin Murray-Boyles, and many of the top big men prospects including Khaman Maluach, Derik Queen, and Noa Essengue did not make this cluster. This is most likely the result of the cluster being a lower-end field goal percentage while these prospects all averaged higher amounts last season.

Out of the prospects that never made a three, the only top prospect was Joan Beringer, but he is in good company being near many rising stars.

TS% vs. PER

Now diving into the more advanced stats, I focused on true shooting percentage compared with player efficiency rating to get a better measure of their efficiency in shooting and overall impact. The all-star group overlaps significantly with the rising stars, all around a 55-63% true shooting percentage. While the rising stars are spread out across the player efficiency rating spectrum, the all-stars tend to group around the 23-24 area.

The top prospects that made it into the high-efficiency cluster of rising stars includes: 

• Dylan Harper
• Ace Bailey
• Tre Johnson
• Kon Knueppel
• Carter Bryant
• Kasparas Jakucionas
• Thomas Sorber
• Derik Queen
• Nique Clifford
• Liam McNeeley
• Noa Essengue 

Even better, VJ Edgecombe, Jeremiah Fears, and Walter Clayton Jr. ended up in the cluster of the proven all-stars in the league. 

Despite Cooper Flagg and Collin Murray-Boyles missing out on this primary cluster, there is also a strong group of rising stars in the top right where Flagg and Murray-Boyles are located, so they are in good company as well. 

It is evident that as I moved into more advanced statistic metrics, more top prospects appear in the cluster of high-performing NBA players, showing the strength in the current evaluation of these players.

Defensive Rating vs. eFG%

In this last scatter plot measuring prospect statistics, I looked at a comparison of effective field goal percentage against the other side of the ball and the players' defensive rating, combining both offense and defense into one graph.

Unsurprisingly, the rising stars and all-star cluster ended up on the better (lower) end of the current prospects' defensive ratings, as defense in very important when transitioning to the next level. However, the current all-stars are near the higher end of that group, which is very surprising surprising. In general, the fact that the entire all-star group is inside the rising stars cluster just shows the strength of a player when they end up inside of that region.

Players that ended up inside the rising stars cluster include:

• Cooper Flagg
• VJ Edgecombe
• Kon Knueppel
• Derik Queen
• Kasparas Jakucionas
• Nique Clifford
• Walter Clayton Jr.
• Carter Bryant
• Collin Murray-Boyles
• Thomas Sorber 

Within that region, VJ Edgecombe, Kasparas Jakucionas, and Walter Clayton Jr. were also inside the more exclusive group of current all-stars.

Takeaways

Top prospects in this year's draft class continually showed up with similar statistics as previous class's top performers. Especially when looking at the more advanced stats, these top players stood out even more compared to the rest of the draft class, solidifying their status as top players heading into the draft. 

However, not every top pick was as frequent in the key rising star and all-star clusters...

Khaman Maluach did not show up in a single rising star or all-star cluster. Granted, one cluster was a lower shooting percentage area when Maluach outperformed with a higher field goal percentage, just like other top centers. As someone who rose near the top of big boards during the season and Duke's great Final Four run, this is quite a concerning observation. Other college big men that were great defenders like Walker Kessler, Mark Williams, Chet Holmgren, Zach Edey, and Evan Mobley were all included as all-star and rising star comparisons, yet Maluach did not find clusters near those groups.

Noa Essengue, Egor Demin, Joan Beringer, Cedric Coward, and Hugo Gonzalez were among the names only making it in a rising star or all-star cluster only once out of the four charts.

The Rutgers duo of Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey alongside, VJ Edgecombe, Tre Johnson, Walter Clayton Jr., and Nique Clifford all had very strong performances amongst the four comparisons, showing the promise and upside they have in their young careers.

A deeper analysis on the key players with lots of upside can be found in my other article titled, 'Microwave Magic: Prospects with Star-Level Metrics Ready for the Next Level.'